Only Change Is Certain

hese aren't easy days for Pentagon program managers. About the only thing Defense planners can count on is that they will be living with an exceptional level of uncertainty for the foreseeable future. Under plans set in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Defense Department is supposed to spend $60 billion to modernize weapons systems in 2001, but program managers aren't planning to uncork the champagne yet.

Major weapons programs that once seemed untouchable have come under unprecedented scrutiny, and funding streams that once flowed freely are drying up. Also, emerging technologies continually complicate program requirements, requiring the U.S. military both to take advantage of the opportunities these technologies offer and to develop countermeasures against the threat that potential adversaries will do the same.

"Our No. 1 acquisition priority is providing the weapons and equipment our combat forces and our allies will need to meet our strategic objectives in 2010 and beyond," Jacques Gansler, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the Senate Armed Services committee panel on emerging threats in March. "One of the difficulties is that we must always be looking with one eye to the day ahead and another eye to the distant future-10 or 20 years down the line." In terms of weapons acquisition, the Defense Department is working to address five goals, Gansler said:

o Achieve an interoperable, integrated, secure and smart infrastructure for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance that addresses both strategic and tactical needs.

o Develop and deploy enough long-range, all-weather, low-cost, precise and "brilliant" weapons for both offensive and defensive use.

o Achieve rapid force projection, global reach and greater mobility for extremely rapid response to a crisis anywhere.

o Develop and deploy credible deterrents and, if necessary, military defense against projected threats, including biological, chemical and nuclear weapons; urban combat; information warfare; and large numbers of low-cost ballistic and cruise missiles. o Achieve inter-service jointness and interoperability with our allies.

"Our combat forces must be organized, trained, equipped and managed with multiple missions in mind," Gansler said. In particular, the military must develop effective countermeasures-such as information warfare defenses, vaccines and special medical agents to counter biological and chemical weapons, defenses against ballistic and cruise missiles, and the ability to destroy hard and deeply buried targets.

Future adversaries won't be foolish enough to challenge U.S. superiority on a plane-for-plane, ship-for-ship or tank-for-tank basis but will be more likely to use weapons of mass destruction, information warfare and large quantities of relatively low-cost cruise and ballistic missiles. They also will have access to commercial navigation, communications and imagery satellites, Gansler said.

Gansler has worked with the department's top procurement officials to speed up the weapons acquisition process. By relying much more on computer simulation in the design and testing phases and by streamlining the requirements that govern the acquisition process from the concept phase to fielding, Gansler hopes to get new technologies in the hands of the troops before those technologies are obsolete-a serious challenge for the services in recent years.

"In some respects, we have become the victims of our own technological advances," Gansler said. "Our success in using new technology to our advantage in operations such as Desert Storm and Bosnia have made those technologies an object for acquisition by all."